The Stealth Genre - Can Hitman: Absolution Save it?

Hitman: Absolution represents the best hope to bring cleverness and ingenuity back into the stealth/action genre. Here's why I hope the latest in the Hitman franchise brings us back to the days of Thief and the original Splinter Cell, when stealth meant problem-solving, assessing whether a fight was really worth it and, most of all, a much greater level of difficulty than what passes for "stealth" nowadays.